Chinese lottery bets $14M on Bitcoin mining

Chinese lottery group 500.com will start mining Bitcoin after buying $14.4 million worth of Bitmain rigs from a group of private sellers.

500.com intends to pay for the miners with company stock priced at $12.10 per share — a few percentage points lower than its current price.

Once the rigs are online, 500.com expects to wield 918.5 petahashes per second, which is equal to smaller pools generating around 1 BTC per day ($34,800).

Markets reacted somewhat positively; 500.com stock opened Monday trade 10% higher than its previous close but now trades on par with last week.

500.com hasn’t explicitly said why it’s jumping into Bitcoin — but the rampaging share prices of crypto mining outfits Riot and Marathon could have something to do with it.

Not to mention, the company agreed in December to sell $23 million in stock to a Hong Kong firm for a mix of US dollars and crypto, which doubled its share price out of a seven year rut.